See Without Trying

 

See Without Trying

(“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of a messenger who proclaims peace, who brings good news, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God rules!’” Isaiah 52:7)

There were motives that we all thought were plain to see,
plans that stood upon pillars driven deep into bedrock.
There were methods we thought were acceptable to all,
frameworks that were familiar like facets on a diamond.

How could we have missed it,
how could we be mistaken about
something we were so sure of,
something about which there was no doubt?

And yet the time came for hand-me-downs to be
tossed aside
as the manufactured doctrines they were.
And the day blazed with sounds like the sun
that warmed the necks of everyone.

And the invisible was what we had missed,
we insisted everyone salute the flag
we ran up our own poles. While it flapped in the wind
we became deaf to the silence that is heard by everyone.

Executions are not cause for applause,
battlefield victories are not the inspiration for
the new song
that sings of level roads and ditches filled with
the new rain
that beautifies the desert and makes the olive branches
bloom.

How can we rest until everyone is at rest?
How can we assume that we are the ones
chosen to author the world? Better than this,
and better yet,
let our feet find the warm earth again,
the beach at setting sun,
and the long reach of unarmed proclamations.
And let us see without trying
that our morning is slumber for
half the points upon the eternal circle;
the eternal journey, one tiny tittle of time.